Cryonics in popular culture

First and foremost, the urban legend that Walt Disney was cryopreserved is false. He was cremated in 1966. Before 1967, all cryopreservations occurred in mortuary, post-embalming conditions and were terminated by relatives shortly. This is often referenced in media such as in a 1996 episode of the The Simpsons 'The Day the Violence Died'

Television

1990 L.A. Law features a character suing the state for her constitutional right to be frozen alive as she has an inoperable brain tumor.

In television, perhaps the most well-known example of cryonics is the pilot episode of Futurama, where main character Fry, a pizza delivery boy, accidentally falls into a cryo chamber and wakes up in the year 2,999.

A more accurate example is the episode Head Case of the TV series Castle; which was praised due to its accuracy by cryonics pioneer Mike Darwin.

In House of Cards "Chapter 60", it is mentioned energy giant Raymond Tusk is signed up for cryonics.

Games

In Alpha Centauri, the crew of the UNS Unity; a fusion starship on a 40-year journey to Alpha Centauri, a stored in stasis.

The original Deus Ex has a secret area that the player can access, where former Illuminati (lol) leader Lucius DeBeers (Like the diamond company, get it? Nevermind...) was stored in a 'cryo pod' by his protegé, co-conspirator Morgan Everett, until the technology to revive him can be invented. Unknown to him, the technology has been available for some time, but Everett refuses to revive him to maintain power. Somehow DeBeers can continue to talk and think in the pod, and can talk to the player, who can tell him the truth; in which case DeBeers asks the player to kill him.

Other media

Alex Harris from Simon Funk's After Life had his body cryopreserved by Alcor after he died while being uploaded.

In Greg Egan's Zendegi, ultra-rationalist internet millionaire Nate Caplan is cryopreserved due to a terminal condition. Another character, an oil tycoon whose enthusiasm in a Senate hearing cut funding to a project to scan an entire human brain, was also cryopreserved after his death.

Cryonics plays a side role David Zindell's A Requiem for Homo Sapiens series. In the short story that spawned it, Shanidar, the main character's son is born without legs and is frozen in snow. His father rescues him and travels to the nearest city, where he is told that no cryonicist can bring him back to life. In Neverness, the main character's friend, Bardo, dies and falls into a river, where he's frozen and returned to the city for revival by the cryologists. Later, in The Wild, human-turned-God-turned-religious-computer Nikolos Daru Ede tells the main character how his body was cryopreserved (With a raging boner) after he was uploaded, then asks him to help him find the body so that he may be a man again.

Basically every interstellar passanger in The Rediscovery of Man and the Zones of Thought series. The main character in House of Suns prefers cryonic preservation to other methods of maintaining people for long interstellar flights.

Film

There is an announced fictional cryonics drama announced in 2011 staring Paul Rudd.

See also

• Celebrity cryonics
• Transhumanism in popular culture